• Trouble in Austin: Apple repeats last year’s iMac holiday shortage with the Mac Pro – If you order a Mac Pro today, it will ship sometime in February. • The new Mac Pro: First impressions – It’s smaller and yet heavier than you’d expect, and early benchmarks show it’s really, really fast . . [...]
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• Retina iPad Mini Now Available for Purchase From Apple’s Online Store – With no warning or formal announcement from Apple, the iPad Mini with Retina display can now be purchased from Apple’s online store. 16- and 32-GB Wi-Fi-only models ship in 1-3 business days at this writing; all others, 5-10 days. • GlobalFoundries to
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• New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach – With the help of major telcos, the NSA has the ability to reach 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, according to Wall Street Journal interviews with current and former intelligence officials. • US doesn’t know what Snowden took, sources say – The feds don’t know
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• Jump, Edge, or Next: which mobile carrier’s early upgrade plan screws you the least? – It depends on how often you wait to upgrade. The longer you wait, the more you pay, and it becomes less of a bargain. Overall, none is a great deal. Nice analysis from The Verge. • Motorola to hold
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Google announced a redesign of its Maps site and apps at its I/O conference back in May, but so far it’s only been spotted on the Web-based version of the service. But starting today, a new version of Maps for smartphones and tablets begins rolling out on Android, with an iOS update coming soon, according to Google’s Official Blog.

But as we all know, Google giveth and Google taketh away. The arrival of new Maps apps means the death of another Google offering – its Latitude location-sharing service is being retired.

• Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy – Om Malik argues that Facebook’s new Android layer, as announced Thursday on the new HTC First phone, couples location and personal information in a way not previously seen. With this phone, you have almost no privacy, he says. Also Mark Zuckerberg on
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